Month: April 2009

Awesome couple of days with the guys in Delhi – loads done, lots of people met, lots of fun.

Spent the first day taking the guys through the TED presentation, and also the Nokia team here through the wider brand story.

Then Nusrat, Drew, Madhavi, Amelia,
Rob & I headed off to Rajastahn to drink in a little of the
emerging market vibe for "My First Nokia".

A three hour drive terminated at the
Hotel/16th century hillfort in Neemrama. Amazing place, beautiful.
Nicest place I've ever brainstormed in by far! Stuck up in hills in 44c
was a bit hectic though. Spent the afternoon working through ideas in a
pretty amazing room before heading off to a few villages to just hang
out and ask a few questions. It was all pretty head spinny stuff.

Back way after dark for a few beers
and a bit more work. and then lots of sleep. Monkeys peacocks and
donkeys on the veranda this morning…

Back to Delhi today to work on the presentation for tuesday. Back to London tomorrow.

Out tonight for post-pitch Delhi beers and hopefully disgraceful behavior.

Lovely place, cool bunch of people, happy planner

Massive thanks to Madhavi, Nus, Drew,
Rob & Amelia for putting up with me and looking after me, and usual
big love to Christian

A lovely new W2O masthead (cheers, Ryan), a Twitter feed (yes, Russell, I know you suggested it about two years ago – we're part of the long tail), and in the spirit of optimism in these dark days of 'armageddon flu' and recession, with acknowledgement to the marvellous Ian Dury, some reasons to be cheerful:

Summer, Buddy Holly, the working follyGood golly Miss Molly and boatsHammersmith Palais, the Bolshoi BalletJump back in the alley and nanny goats

Some readers may be aware that we have outgrown our palatial offices at 16 Hanbury Street in London's fashionable east end, and as a result we're taking additional space directly opposite on the other side of the road. The extra room will be great – working conditions currently resemble the London Underground during rush hour – but being split across two buildings isn't ideal. So we wanted to find a way to link the two buildings. Our first idea was a bridge across the street. But we couldn't get planning permission for that. So instead a team of W+K 'moles' has started work on a tunnel beneath Hanbury Street, linking the two sites at basement level. Work is progressing well:

Our plan is for the tunnel not just to be a functional throughfare but to be a feature that reflects our values and way of working: a portal, if you will, representing the journey from idea to execution. The finished thing will look something like this:

This is Crille Lampa, who joined us today. He's an Art
Director with a mixture of experience from the biggest agencies to the
smallest. He's worked as a graphic designer and Art Director, but
essentially Crille's an ideas man. He's spent time at TBWA and Goodby Silverstein and most recently he's been at Wisely, a digital
agency in Stockholm.

And this is Penni Fu, a strategic planner who is over here on loan from W+K Shanghai –
we’ve swapped her with Sophie Dollar. It should be an amazing
experience for both of them, and a great way for us to share and
connect across our offices. Penni's working on Nike and The Guardian.

We asked Nick Barham, the W+K planning director in China for some gossip about Penni for this post. Apparently there is none.

It's good to see we weren't excluded from the lovely little film made by a New Zealand agency slagging off 'cutting edge London creativity'. Wieden + Kennedy (or Sodom + Gomorrah) boasts its fair share of "skinny jeaned, thick rim spectacled creatives" so it would have hurt a bit to have been left out. Thanks guys.

Sophie,
Ben and Lucy have compiled a list of 11 tips that they think could be useful for student or junior creatives who are compiling portfolios and
looking for placements/jobs.

We get inundated with requests to see junior books and unfortunately
there aren’t enough spare hours in the day to see all these folks.

But this way we can direct them easily to a bit of help.

The tips are below.

Creative placements

We do hire junior creative teams on a short term placement basis; usually a four week stint. We usually do about ten placements a year so there’s often a bit of a waiting list. We like to see teams and their books at least a couple of times before we invite them to stay.

We do these so that teams get to experience life in an ad agency.

If you’re interested in a creative work placement then please contact Ben Everitt or Sophie Bodoh via e-mail on ben.everitt@wk.com or sophie.bodoh@wk.com.

Ben and Sophie’s top 11 book tips.

We decided to write a list of things we’ve learned along the way. This is just what we think, somebody else’s tips might be completely different.

1. Keep it quick. Creatives looking at your book have limited time so make the most of the opportunity. Keep storyboards and radio short and sweet.

2. A balanced book tends to have between 7-9 ad campaigns and a few other creative ideas.

3. Get to the bottom of a brand. Try to find out what makes them different to everyone else and what’s at the heart of their product and their company.

4. Demonstrate different tones of voice. How does this brand talk to people? What’s their personality?

5. Find different ways of talking to people. You don’t always need to conform to the conventional. Logos don’t have to sit in corners. Photos don’t have to be funny. And long copy is not scary.

6. Do more than just press ads. There are many other interesting ways of exploring an idea. What are the appropriate media for your idea? What medium is right for your audience? What will draw people in and surprise them? (TV, press, radio, online, viral, ambient, talking dogs…)

8. Expand at least one of your ideas into a big campaign and prove it’s not just a one off poster or TV ad.

9. We like to find out about you as well as seeing your book. Show us your matchbox collection, the short film that you’re making on the side or your greatest baking success. We see tons of ads, but sometimes it’s these little funny things that sums up who you are.

7. Listen and take notes too. You’d be surprised how many people don’t! Which is annoying to creatives who’ve given up their time to see you.

10. The advertising world is small so don’t piss people off or others might get to hear about it.

11. If you like a particular team, try to go back to them again with more work. Try to build a relationship. This will help you make more contacts, they may recommend you to their advertising friends and colleagues.